Loyalty to the Queen
by cthulhu-with-a-fez
Summary: A continuation of the arranged marriage AU I started for SoMa Week. The previous installments can be found in my SoMa Week collection, for the prompts 'loyalty', 'wounds', and 'first I Love You'. Current chapter: Soul and Maka's first encounter, in which glances are exchanged and not much else. (A birthday present for ilarual.)


Happy Birthday, Laura! I figured I had at least one project lying around that I knew you'd like, so… yeah. Loyalty AU. Have some. This is a further account of their first sort-of-meeting/five-seconds-of-eye-contact.

:

_She'd only ever seen him once, at one of the numerous social functions a lady of her status was expected to host and attend. He'd slipped away before she could so much as greet him, leaving her with only a vague impression of white hair and shadowed, burgundy eyes._

_/_

_She had been radiant in the light of the chandelier, he remembered, smiling and laughing and probably saying all the right things to all the right people in exactly the way he'd never been able to. Soul had left the ballroom and hadn't even spoken to the girl. But he remembered her eyes._

:

Maka shifted uncomfortably as the bodice of her dress closed more tightly against her ribcage. The whalebone ribs of the almost-corset constricted her breathing to the point of discomfort, and for what? She'd been told it would improve her waistline, whatever that meant, but she wasn't sure how compressing her ribcage was going to accomplish that.

Her bodice tightened again, and she let out a strangled gasp.

"Blair," she gritted, "tell me again why I let you talk me into wearing this?"

Her handmaiden and self-appointed big sister winced in sympathy, and then grinned. "Because it'll make you look gorgeous, that's why."

Delivering one more stentorian pull at the bodice's laces, Blair finally tied them off in a neat bow. She stepped back and cocked slowly cocked her head to the side. Maka shifted slightly under her intense stare.

"So…" she prompted slowly. Blair tilted her head to the other side, blinked twice, and then let out a delighted squeal.

"Oh, Maka-chan, you look GORGEOUS! Bu-tan knew you would, you know – bodices work absolute wonders," she finished, nodding sagely as if she'd delivered a great and immutable truth of the universe.

Maka smiled weakly, rubbing her ribs through the fabric. "Thanks, I guess." She reflexively attempted to take a deep breath, but frowned when her lungs could barely fill to half their full capacity. She'd heard horror stories of women who'd suffocated in contraptions like these, a fate she was highly unwilling to share. She turned to Blair, brow furrowed.

"Isn't the fact that I can't breathe properly something of a problem?" Maka asked, worry in her voice. Blair merely grinned.

"Nonsense. I am an _expert _at these – you'll be perfectly fine," she replied, dismissing Maka's concerns with an airy wave of her hand. Eyeing Maka's figure appreciatively, her grin shifted into a catlike smile with narrowed eyes.

"And perfectly ravishing," she continued, eliciting a blush from Maka. The slender blonde hadn't missed Blair's roving eyes.

"Hardly," she mumbled. Corsets could only do so much, and she wasn't exactly any great beauty. Shaking off her maudlin thoughts, Maka straightened her spine and walked towards her wardrobe. She closed the doors and turned back to her handmaiden. The soiree being hosted at her family's estate began in several hours, and there were still several last-minute preparations to attend to, and Maka wouldn't let her mother deal with all of it on her own.

"Time to head down and face the music, I suppose."

:

Soul shifted slightly on the seat of the swaying carriage, seated next to his brother and across from his parents. He stopped after catching his father's reprimanding glare, instead turning to stare out the small window at the scenery rolling by. They'd been on the road for several hours, and Soul was beginning to wonder if they'd ever reach their destination. Some party at the estate of one of the numerous noble families his parents tried to make nice to. He let out a heavy breath.

"Why am I coming, again?" he asked. "I can understand having Wes come along. He's the firstborn. But why me?"

Lord Evans pinched the bridge of his nose with an air of irritation.

"Because," he said, "it's your duty as an Evans to present yourself to our peers. To establish your presence as a player on the board, as it were. So far we've been lenient on this matter –"

Soul snorted derisively. _More like they didn't want to publicize the fact that they had a freak for a son, _he thought, self-consciously running his tongue along the edges of his pointed teeth. _At least I'm just the secondborn._

His father shot him a glare at his interruption, and Soul quieted his thoughts.

"We've been lenient," his father continued, words carrying an edge of anger this time. "But it's time you grew up and took on your proper role in this family. Your brother has been betrothed almost a year now, but it's nearly impossible to arrange an advantageous match for you when no one seems to be aware beyond rumors that you _exist_."

"And what makes you think that anyone would be more willing to marry their daughter off to me once they've seen me?" Soul inquired, a thin veneer of politeness masking the sardonic bite in his words.

"Because of your family name," Lord Evans replied coldly.

Soul's mother laid a hand lightly on her husband's shoulder, clearly of the opinion that he'd gone far enough. She turned to face her son and gave him a slight smile.

"Just try to enjoy yourself, Soul. Come to think of it, the Albarns have a daughter around your age – see if you can talk to her, okay?"

Soul nodded mutely and turned to stare out the window again. He highly doubted that the young Lady Albarn would be interested, but he appreciated his mother's efforts. He supposed that the least he could do would be to talk to her, even if it was only the sort of meaningless pleasantries that were expected from anyone of their social class. The carriage rumbled on in relative silence, the tension between its four occupants laying heavy in the air, and Soul tried to use the time to summon some sort of energy or enthusiasm for the upcoming ordeal. And an ordeal it would be; he'd never liked crowds of people, and especially not ones full of the kind of bombastic self-absorption so often found among the upper echelon of society. He closed his eyes, desperately hoped that it wouldn't be as bad as he'd envisioned, and fell into a restless doze.

/

Sometime later, Soul was roused to wakefulness by Wes's hand jostling his knee.

"Hey, little brother, wake up. We're almost there."

Soul rubbed at his eyes, releasing a yawn as he stretched his neck to the side. True to his brother's words, as he glanced out the window he could see the lights of the Albarn estate shining across the well-kept grounds. He tugged slightly at his shirt's tight collar.

"I shouldn't need to remind you both to be on your best behavior," Lord Evans said, staring at Soul as he did so. The implication was clear – after all, Wes was the golden boy of the family. Soul was just a barely-tolerable black sheep.

He met his father's glare with one of his own. "I don't plan on causing trouble, you know."

A cold silence fell, although the tension was quickly dispelled as the carriage pulled up to the front steps. Giving himself a final once-over, Soul steeled himself to enter the fray. This was going to be… fun.

:

Maka's smile was beginning to falter slightly as she stood in the ballroom, having been trapped in a conversation with an incredibly long-winded noble. His incredibly long, pointed nose twitched with every word, and she was almost certain that the cane he kept twirling would soon become a danger to the rest of the people in the room.

"My family's legend dates back to the twelfth century," he said pompously, for the fourth time that evening. "Would you like to hear it?"

Maka gritted her teeth to keep her smile in place, answering with a tight voice. "You've already told me your family's legend twice tonight, sir."

"Fool!" he barked, before launching into a completely different version of the 'family legend' than he'd spouted during the previous several renditions. Maka slowly edged away, thankful that Sir Excalibur was so caught up in his own recitation to notice her exit. Weaving through the middling crowd of people in the ballroom, she leaned up against a pillar to catch her breath. Closing her eyes, she tilted her head to the side and rested her temple against the cool marble. She could feel the beginnings of a headache forming, and to no surprise – Sir Excalibur was… incredibly trying to remain around. He was one of the foremost warriors of the kingdom, however, so Maka knew she was somewhat obligated to keep her family in his good graces. Didn't mean she had to like it, or him. She sighed, although not as deeply as she would have liked – her bodice was as constricting as ever. Hopefully the event would pick up the pace a little bit, sometime soon.

Hearing the doors open on the other end of the room, she perked up and turned to look at the slight disturbance. A stately couple had walked through the doors, arm in arm, preceded by two boys. One was tall and fair-haired, appearing to be in his late teens or perhaps early twenties. He walked through the crowds with ease, a slight smile already on his face. The other was shorter, and appeared about her age. His hair was snowy white, and although his head was downcast she could still see the discontent in his downturned mouth. His arms hung stiff at his sides, hands curled loosely into fists. He clearly didn't want to be there. As though sensing her gaze, he looked up for a moment, and Maka blinked in mild surprise. It might just be a trick of the light, but his eyes had shone a deep wine-red for the brief moment they'd held her own. He looked away immediately afterwards, melting into the crowd despite his relatively unusual appearance. Maka wanted to chase after him, to find him and talk to him, but of course that was absurd. She didn't know him; she'd never seen him before. She was needed in the ballroom to help her mother. She couldn't just leave. Pushing the white-haired boy out of her mind for the time being, she turned to reenter the press of people now populating the parquet floors.

:

Soul walked into the ballroom a step or two ahead of his parents, but just behind Wes. He looked around, somewhat impressed by the presentation of the room. The ceilings were high and arched, with marble pillars extending up the walls and warm wooden floors polished to a smooth finish beneath their feet. Subtle floral arrangements adorned the walls and tables, adding an accent of color to the warm but neutral color tones of the room. A flash of jade green by one of the pillars caught his attention, and he flicked his eyes to the side in search of it.

It was a girl.

She seemed to be about his age, dressed in a slim-fitting green dress that complemented her slender figure. Her hair was pulled up into an elegant knot on the back of her head, and she was staring at him with bright, bottle-green eyes. He saw a hint of surprise and something resembling confusion cross her face as she looked at him, and he turned away. It occurred to him that she was probably the young Lady Maka that his mother had suggested he speak to, but he decided he didn't care. Spotting an open balcony along the far wall, empty of people, he made the swiftest beeline he could muster towards it. The press of people in the ballroom had already started to make him feel slightly irritable. Resting his hands against the cool stone of the balcony's railing, he closed his eyes and released a sigh. The fresh air was doing wonders. Although he could still hear the chatter emanating from the room behind him, it seemed… muffled, somehow, standing out under the stars as it was. The balcony afforded him a truly excellent view of the Albarns' estate, including the moderately thick but well-tended forest, the gardens to the back, and the open grassy lawns they'd ridden past on the way up to the manor. A pond reflected the night sky, slight ripples pulling across its surface in the late spring breeze. It seemed calm. Peaceful. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Soul began to put together a piano composition for the night. He stopped soon after starting, unable to really focus on it the way he should have been able to – the way he usually could. He kept thinking about green eyes instead. Impossibly bright, beautiful green eyes, belonging to a girl he'd never really met. He wondered, absently, if this girl liked piano music.

:

Maka sat on one of the many chairs on the sidelines of the ballroom, foot bouncing slightly under her skirt to the beat of the slow music. The dancing had been going on for some time now, and she was rapidly nearing the threshold of exhaustion. To preserve some energy, she'd sat out the last two songs; fortunately, no one had asked her to dance with them during that time. She thought again of the boy with the red eyes. He'd disappeared into the crowd, and no matter how hard she looked she hadn't found him. And it wasn't like she could ask for his whereabouts – she didn't know his name, or even who to ask.

The song ended as she was lost in her thoughts. Catching a motion in her periphery, she turned to find a fair-haired young man approaching her with hand outstretched.

"May I have this dance?" he asked courteously, and Maka didn't quite want to refuse.

"You may," she replied, and rose gracefully with her hand in his. They danced in relative silence to the slow waltz music floating on the air, the string quartet performing as beautifully as they had done all evening. After a few more measures, however, the young man cleared his throat.

"Might I ask the name of my partner?" he asked playfully, flashing a slight smile to her as they followed the motion of the other dancers.

"Lady Maka Albarn," she replied lightly. "And yours?"

"Wesley Evans, but you can call me Wes if you like."

Maka had heard of the Evans family before. They ruled over a middling parcel of land several hours to the east, and kept a large standing body of warriors in rotation. Their main exports were certainly contradictory, she mused; weaponry and musical instruments hardly seemed connected in any way. She hummed in acknowledgement of Wesley's introduction, and they continued on in silence for a few more measures before he broke the silence again.

"You wouldn't happen to have seen my brother Soul around, have you? He's about a head shorter than me, white hair, red eyes…?" He trailed off slightly.

A flash of recognition flashed through her at his words, and she realized that Wes must have been the taller of the two boys who'd come in earlier. At least she had a name to pin to the younger one, Maka thought. She shook her head.

"I'm sorry, I don't think I have. The last I saw of him was shortly after you and your family entered the room."

Wes grimaced slightly, in the manner of someone who'd been hoping not to receive the news that they'd known would be coming.

"I suppose I should have expected it," he muttered to himself. "He never did like crowds."

Maka furrowed her brow, but said nothing.

They finished the dance in silence, and Wes bowed slightly out of courtesy once the song ended. "Tell me, are there any balconies or alcoves around here? Soul might be in one of them, and I really would like to find him soon."

She nodded slightly, somewhat pleased to be able to help him. Wes seemed nice, even if his brother was apparently quite standoffish.

"There are a few balconies on the far side of the room," she answered, and pointed towards them. "I hope you find your brother, Wes."

"Thanks. I do too," he replied, an absent half-smile ghosting over his face before he melted into the crowd in search of Soul. Maka sank back down into her chair, thinking about their exchange. She'd never known that the Evans family had a second son – she'd heard of Wesley before, when his betrothal announcement was sent to each of the houses of their allies, but she hadn't heard of Soul. Or at least, not by name. There'd been a rumor floating around the servants' quarters that the Evanses had a demon child in the family, according to Blair, but she'd dismissed it as a wildly inaccurate speculation. Even now, she continued to dismiss it – despite his unusual pigmentation, what little she'd seen of his face hadn't seemed demonic at all. He was actually rather handsome, if she was to be honest with herself. She gazed off to the balconies, wondering whether Wes had found his brother yet.

Catching another motion in her peripheral vision, Maka pulled her polite smile back on again and shook loose from her thoughts. She rose gracefully, masking a wince as her feet protested the long time spent on them, and began to dance again. After another waltz full of small talk and subtle political maneuvering she'd all but forgotten about the Evans brothers.

:

Soul flinched as a hand descended onto his shoulder, breaking him from his somewhat-meditative state of staring out onto the grounds and wishing for the party to be over. He relaxed once he registered his brother's voice behind him.

"Are you planning on lurking out here until the party's over, Soul?" Wes asked lightly.

Soul snorted, a hint of petulance in the noise. "If I can, yeah."

A heavy silence fell after his words, and Soul could practically feel the waves of concern rolling off of Wes behind him.

"You can't do that forever, Soul. Sooner or later, you have to go out there. You know that. Mother and Father expect it of us, and it's our duty as -"

His gentle words were cut off by Soul slamming his fist down on the stone wall on the balcony's edge.

"If you say 'as Evanses', Wes, I swear, I am going to toss you off this balcony," he gritted. "I don't want to be here, Father doesn't want me to be here, pretty sure half the time you don't want me to be here -"

"That's not true," Wes contradicted, but Soul was undeterred by the interruption.

"Face it," he continued, heavy gaze directed at his older brother. "I'm not cut out for this, okay? I can't be… that." He swept his hand back towards the ballroom to indicate the brightly-clothed press of people, socializing politely as he knew he was expected to. Soul sighed and bowed his head. His feet scuffed against the floor.

"I can't be you," he mumbled, and Wes put a hand on his little brother's shoulders once more.

"You don't have to be, and no one expects that of you. Least of all me. I like being me, can't have you usurping my position, right?" He ended with a joking tone, knuckling his brother's ribs lightly in an attempt at levity. It didn't really work. Wes sighed and dropped his hand. If Soul really didn't want to be there… well, there wasn't really any way to convince him to participate in the event if he just wasn't up for it.

"I'm going back to the dance, okay? I'll cover for you with our parents. Come out when you're ready, okay?" he said, and exited the balcony with a single affirming nod from Soul.

For a while after his brother had left, Soul continued staring out at the grounds. But after a while he turned his back to the wall and stared inwards at the ballroom. The brightly-lit room before him was full of people, the men in well-tailored suits and the women in jewel-bright dresses. A string quartet played in the corner, and the waltz music that floated on the air was quite beautiful – even to Soul's discerning musical tastes. He passively observed the dancers as they twirled in near-unison. He'd never liked dancing, really. Lady Evans had suggested that perhaps he just hadn't found the right partner, which could have been true. Soul doubted that he'd ever find someone who wanted to dance with him, really.

A flare of green caught his eye again, and he turned to see if it was the same girl from before. His suspicions were correct as he watched her, jade dress trailing behind her as she spun gracefully on the arm of a noble twice her age. Her smile was radiant under the chandelier. He saw her lips move, no doubt making the kind of polite small talk that he could never really manage without a grimace, and the man she was dancing with tipped his head back in a laugh. Oh. Must've been a joke, then.

He continued watching her for a while before turning back to face the grounds, berating himself for his actions. What was he, a stalker? And a pretty pathetic one at that, really, mooning over some random girl who was probably already betrothed and wouldn't give him the time of day even if she wasn't. He let out a disgusted sigh. Who was he even trying to kid? Even if he wanted to, he still wouldn't be able to scrape up enough courage to actually talk to her, or ask her to dance, or any of the hundred million other things that he was expected to be able to do when in the company of a lady. And especially one he had been all but straight-up told to converse with. Hell, who knew; he might end up ruining relations between their two families altogether. Best to not, he reasoned, shoving away the little voice in the back of his head that told him how pathetic it was that he was rationalizing his way out of a conversation.

As he stood on the balcony, he didn't see the way that Lady Maka scanned the crowd, as if in search of someone. And even if he had, he never would have thought she was looking for him.

:

Later that night, as the two of them slept in their respective beds, they were both mulling over the night's events. And just before they finally fell asleep, they were visited by a memory of the other's eyes – one pair red, one pair green. They wouldn't remember the other until several years later, however, when they met as a condition of their engagement.


End file.
